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Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Road Cult

What becomes rather clear to me
is that these national calculations are simply not to be trusted.Infrastructure always needs to be maintained
and pretty well it is on a local needs basis.After all anyone on the ground can determine which roads are heavily
used and need plenty of support and which are rarely used and need only the
minimum.What this approach does not do
is encourage the over building of capacity anywhere.That decision must be made at a higher level
in order to channel real growth.

That leaves us to discuss the
future.Two major changes are looming on
the horizon.

The most obvious is the advent of
electric transport generally.This will
have the effect of cutting the actual vehicle weight in half at least and
produce a commensurate decline in outright road wear.Coming with this will be driverless
cars.Thus while traffic will not
necessarily lessen except where high population density has allowed the
effective use of trains, the road wear will be much lower and automatic driving
may allow for some smarter engineering that lowers road costs.

Less obvious is the coming advent
of airships for long haul transport.Once the adjustment is made, airships sized to carry one, two, and four
containers at a time will easily take over the whole of long haul
trucking.Firstly the operating costs
are likely to be much lower once we have mass production of airships.There is no running gear to wear out or
excess mass to haul around at all that vaguely compares to that of a truck.Even better, movement is generally straight
line at a plausible seventy plus miles per hour even without clever engineering.The goods are also delivered unshaken which
seriously matters for plenty of cargos.

I cannot over estimate the
airship revolution made possible by modern materials.An airship can deliver directly from an
origination facility to a distribution facility by straight line travel half
way around the world at a speed of close to two thousand miles per day.In fact, on a west to east route flying with
prevailing winds, one could easily add an extra thousand lie each day.That means that California
produce could be a mere day away from New York
and two days away from Paris.

Just about every aerospace player
is working up designs as we speak.They
have all made the same calculation and understand that they can clearly compete
directly with a lot of, if not all long haul trucking and in time with even
rail transport.After all, just what
does a ship rail link do for you between China
and North America if the container can be moved directly from a factory in
central China to Chicago in a week?

What this means is that the
interstate infrastructure will simply end up exiting the long haul trucking
business in general rather quickly.This
will lower the wear hugely and expand capacity for ordinary vehicular traffic.The trend is thus fo the better in the medium
term.

What I have just described will
be in the throes of full conversion within the decade and will complete with
startling speed.The skies near cities
are going to be actually full of airships and the freeways will feel like it is
Sunday.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has just released a report that
should be titled "Pretending it is 1952." Like a broken record, ASCE
is again painting a bleak picture of the future if American politicians -- as if
they need to be plied -- won't open up the checkbook for our noble engineers.
And in a way that the Soviet Central Committee would have expected from Pravda,
the media and blogger world is sounding the alarm. This feels more like a cult
than a serious discussion on America's
future.

In the Long Depression of the 1870s, the railroads found they had
overinvested in transportation capacity. Speculating on future growth and the
returns on land development, they collectively built more rail lines than could
be put to productive use. The result was a huge financial correction in which
the private-sector railroads consolidated their routes, downsized their
unproductive infrastructure, and put their reserve capacity into endeavors that
had a higher rate of return. This was a painful, but necessary, correction.

The parallels to 2011 are obvious. We've built
out the interstate highway system as it was originally envisioned --
although we opted to go through cities instead of around as planned -- and then
we built some more. We poured money into highways, county roads, and local
streets. We have so much transportation infrastructure -- a huge proportion of
it with no productivity -- that every level of government is now choking on maintenance costs.

While originally conceived in the name of "national defense,"
these investments were made in the service of "growth" and the belief
that all increases in mobility, no matter how insignificant, would add to the
overall prosperity. We've spent trillions to save seconds in the first and last
mile of each trip, and what we've gotten is the fake prosperity of a land-use
pattern that is bankrupting us, housing bubble and all. This is the essence
of the financial correction we are experiencing.

But there is one huge difference between today and 1873. Back then,
while the railroads received government subsidies, they were still private
businesses. They had to face financial reality. Today, our transportation
systems are a public good funded through government spending. The only reality
check on this system is financial collapse.

We have a government that can borrow and tax as much money as needed
and a Federal Reserve to print whatever Congress lacks the "courage"
to raise. Combine that with a cult-like belief that the path to prosperity in America
is to create more growth through more infrastructure
spending, and you have a recipe for financial disaster. There is no negative
feedback loop here that will slow this madness. Even Tea Party darling Michele Bachmann is a shill for massively unproductive
transportation projects in her own district.

So in steps the American Society of Civil Engineers. If this is an infrastructure
cult, they are the normal-looking guy that is there to reassure anyone who
might think of leaving. That is probably what upsets me the most. I'm proud to
be a civil engineer, but I will have nothing to do with ASCE and their
self-serving, narrow view of the world. Consider the following:

ASCE estimated the "costs to households and businesses" from
transportation deficiencies in 2010 to be $130 billion. (pg. 3 of the report)

ASCE estimated the cumulative losses to businesses will be $430 billion
by 2020. (pg. 5)

ASCE estimated the cumulative losses to households will be $482 billion
by 2020. (pg. 5)

If you add these together, the total cost to households and businesses
is $1.042 trillion. Well, ASCE states that to reach "minimum tolerable
conditions" (a pretty sad standard) would take an investment of $220
billion annually. Over 10 years, that's $2.2 trillion. Yeah, you read that
right. The American Society of Civil Engineers wrote a report that suggested
over the next decade we spend $2.2 trillion so that we can save $1.0 trillion.
And you wonder why we're broke.

There are some things to understand about the $1 trillion as well.
Those aren't losses to businesses and households as in money out of their
pockets. This is the same old game we reported on extensively last year with
our disucssion of the cost-benefit analysis approach on the Staples overpass. The
costs are all very real dollars that we spend. The benefits -- or in this case
the losses -- are things like lost driving time and wear and tear on your car.

Say you work at a job making $25/hour. By ASCE math, I as an engineer
spend untold sums and improve your commute by two and a half minutes in each
direction. Each day that is five minutes saved. Each week it is 25 minutes.
Each year I've saved you 22 hours. Over the 25 years of that road, I've saved
you 540 hours which, at $25 per hour, is worth $13,500. Now, it is not just you
that has enjoyed this tremendous windfall. Look around at the thousands of
others on the road with you. Add them all up and, according to ASCE and the
standard engineering approach, this transportation project is making us all
very rich.

ASCE is touting some other GDP costs as well, although it is hard to
discern them clearly since, due to the ridiculousness of the numbers, they are
forced to project out to 2040. Anytime someone has to project out that far to
make an economic argument, they are grasping. For some context, consider that
30 years ago, inflation was over 10 percent, interest rates were over 15
percent, the internet was still a decade and a half away, Ronald Reagan was
president, and the big event of the year was the launching of the Space Shuttle.
Think they've factored in that kind of volatility? And you have to love the hubris of
engineers making projections. What other profession would do a 30-year
projection and come up with a precise number like $3.248 trillion?

ASCE estimated that, in a 30-year trend projection, we would have
400,000 more jobs in 2040 if we fully funded our transportation system (pg.
13). The ridiculousness of this number can't be overstated. New jobless claims last week alone were 400,000.
We're supposed to make a multi-trillion dollar investment over the next three
decades on a trend line projection that we'll have 400,000 more jobs? Are they
serious?

One other thing in the report that made me shake my head was a table
they had titled "Top 20 Countries and Economies Ranked by the Quality of
Roads and Railroads" (pg. 17). For roads, the United
States is ranked 19th, behind such countries as France (second), Switzerland
(third), and Germany
(fifth), all countries that I have driven in. Anyone who has done likewise will
attest that the standard highway in Europe is like a country road here in the U.S. I agree
that their freeways are awesome, but they are also designed to connect towns,
not feed strip development. I would attest that the "quality" in this
case is less engineering-based and more a function of their adjacent land use
not messing things up as ours does.

The table itself is based on an "Executive Opinion Survey"
from "The Global Competitiveness Report for 2010-2011"
[PDF]. ASCE doesn't point out that, despite the sad opinion of our roads, the
report ranks the United
States as the fourth most competitive
economy in the world. It is not really clear how we became so competitive with
an infrastructure system ASCE ranked as a 'D'. Just maybe there is more to an
economy than infrastructure?

At Strong Towns, we want our infrastructure maintained. In fact, it's
the common denominator of a StrongTown. But the reason why
we can't maintain our infrastructure is not because we lack the money or are
afraid to spend it. It is because the systems we have built and the decisions
we've made on what is a good investment are based on the kind of ridiculous
math you see reflected in this ASCE report. We spend a billion here and a
billion there and we get nothing but a couple minutes shaved off of our
commutes, which just means we can build more roads and live further away from
where we work. (Or, as we call that here in America: growth.)

Sixty years of unproductive infrastructure spending later, we are awash
in maintenance liabilities with no money to pay for them. This is what happens
when you have a government-subsidized, Ponzi-scheme
growth system that, at all times, lives for the next transaction.
America is all about new growth, which is why we don't even bother to question
the findings in a study like this.

The ASCE report is an embarrassment to the engineering profession. The
fact that politicians,journalists, and bloggers are all lined up to mindlessly parrot these
conclusions is pathetic. If we are actually going to get this country moving in
a positive direction, we need a real understanding of how infrastructure
spending is used to create value. We need a new approach to land use.

Charles Marohn is a professional engineer licensed in Minnesota and the president of the nonprofit
organization Strong Towns.

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Apr 2017 - 4.1 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO rigorously described as the SPACE TIME PENDULUM, September 2010 I am pleased to report that my essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS' has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) and appeared in their June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in relativity,as well as differential geometry(pure math) and of course analysis. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled Paradigms Shift&. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data and record impressions and interpretations on material read. Do join my blog and receive Four items of interest daily Monday through Saturday.